The impetus for thieves to steal cars is highly associated with other crimes. For example, before a criminal will rob a bank, commit a drive-by shooting, etc., the criminal will usually steal a car or its license plates. Not only are the car or its license plates of tremendous value in an of themselves, but the anonymity conferred to anyone in a stolen car or a vehicle tagged with stolen plates is vital in the commission of crime.
Unfortunately, there exists no reliable means of securing license plates to automobiles. Screws of the prior art do adequately protect against vehicle license plate theft. Many of the prior art screws fail in one of two ways. First, they may have a unique configuration which mates with a special tool, but the purpose is usually to get a better contact in order to reduce stripping. Examples of this are U.S. Pat. No. 3,369,441, issued to Kosar on Feb. 20, 1968, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,667, issued to Wilner on Oct. 11, 1994. Since their purpose is not to prevent removal, but rather to facilitate it, they have the ability to be removed by an ordinary screwdriver, entirely defeating the whole purpose of the present invention.
Another deficiency commonly found in prior art is the lack of any visual indication that a license plate has been secured with unconventional means. The problem is that with many different security screws available, the car dealer or mechanic must be able to easily identify the proper tool from a visual inspection. In the present invention, this is accomplished by simply looking at the notches with respect to the center of the screw and arriving at an orientation, much like the placement of the hands of a clock.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,892,031, issued to Bisbing on Jul. 1, 1975, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,241,408, issued to McCauley on Apr. 30, 1964, suffer in that they are either incapable of being varied or that if they are varied the different variations are not easily recognizable and all of the tools must be tried until the right tool is randomly arrived at.
U.S. Pat. No. 755,804, issued to Smith on Mar. 29, 1904, has different designs on the heads of screws, however, the designs are simply used for ornamentation and do not form the basis for engagement with a tool.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,097,686, issued to Plumer on Mar. 24, 1992, shows a device which requires a special tool to operate it. This differs substantially from the present device. First, Plumer is a lock and key combination. The key must pass into various layers of the lock in order engage the various mechanisms. Second, while the top layer of the lock is somewhat similar to the present invention, in that the lock has a circular opening and an intersecting notch, the lock differs in that it only has one such notch. Furthermore, the goal of the Plumer is not to have multiple tools, but only one. Therefore, there would be no need or reason to add additional notches to Plumer. This is point is important because the purpose of a screw, for purposes of the present invention, is to hold a license plate in place. License plates are valuable and loss is to be avoided. Therefore, the screw must be inserted tight enough to securely hold the plate. A tool having only one point of engagement, such as Plumer's device, cannot properly accomplish this goal.
Therefore a need has been established for a novel screw and removal tool combination which provides secure attachment of an item, primarily a license plate to a car, which deters unauthorized removal and at the same time facilitates easy removal by authorized personnel.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a secure method and apparatus for attaching license plates to vehicles.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a reliable method for removing license plates to vehicles.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for preventing unauthorized removal of license plates from motor vehicles.
It is also an object of the present invention to accord the owner of a vehicle with a simple and cost effective solution to the problem of vehicle license plate theft.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a nearly infinite number of variations for a vehicle license plate safety device so as to maintain low manufacturing costs.
It is also another object of the present invention to provide an apparatus associated with license plate security which is fully functional in accomplishing its goals.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a license plate security apparatus and method which is dependable, nearly tamper-proof, and of great simplicity but keen design.